JCE, a Czech regional energy distributor owned by E.ON of Germany, announced that its electricity purchase prices could increase by as much as 14% next year, the main reason being the increase of CEZ’s wholesale prices. This proves sharp increase of CEZ’s selling prices next year - CEZ, the dominant domestic energy supplier, recently announced its wholesale electricity offer for 2004, which comes in the form of several price/supply-time profile levels (base, peaks), the base levels are generally more expensive than in 2003. The exact selling price is possible to calculate only ex-post.
Separately, CEPS, the national transmission grid operator (in which CEZ owns 34%), will decrease its subscribed capital by the overall volume of losses from previous years to fulfill legal requirements the company must meet before it can begin paying dividends, the Czech Press Agency reported on Friday. Reuters reported that CEPS’ CZK 3bn of financial assets could be distributed to shareholders. CEPS' AGM should decide on a dividend payment in June 2004. Neutral, CEZ must sell its stake in CEPS due to an antitrust ruling (the deadline for the divestiture) is not public.
Jiří Soustružník